As instruments for acquiring a new language, dictionaries are sometimes ineffective. For example, dictionaries generally provide multiple meanings to words, and the meanings often depend on the functions the words play in a particular sentence. In Merriam-Webster OnLine Dictionary (http://www.m-w.com), the word “result” has two entries, as an intransitive verb and as a noun. The word “after” has six entries, as an adverb, a preposition, a conjunction, an adjective, a verbal auxiliary, and a noun. To look up a word, one must first select the appropriate function.
Yet, to a nonnative speaker of a language, determining the function of an unknown word in a specific sentence is not simple, since sentence structures in different languages differ. In English, for example, a sentence generally begins with adjectives to the subject, and some of these may be attributive nouns, operative as adjectives. Additionally, certain words may be used either as nouns or as verbs. In consequence, a list of words may be strung together, wherein each may function in two or more ways, so as to completely baffle a nonnative speaker. Consider for example:
“Stock market rates show improved performance.”
Is “market” the subject, and “rates” the predicate? Is “rates” the subject, and “show” the predicate? Or is “show” the subject and “improved” the predicate?
Consider also,
“High health care costs result in poor health care availability.”
Is “care” the subject, and “costs” the predicate? Or is “costs” the subject and “result” the predicate?
In fact, in some cases, determining the function of an unknown word in a sentence may be more difficult than inferring the meaning of a word, whose function in the sentence is known.
Native speakers are sensitive to subtle clues that generally make these sentences unequivocal. But nonnative speakers of a particular language may not be sufficiently familiar with or sufficiently tuned to these clues. Yet, it is on this point, crucial to understanding, that dictionaries offer no help.
Additionally, in most English dictionaries, definitions are provided for a word stem, when a verb, but not for its participle and gerund forms, which may function as adjectives. A certain linguistic skill is required for making the transformation to an adjective, a skill not always possessed by a nonnative speaker of English, whose native tongue does not include such transformations. Furthermore, since ordinary English dictionaries generally do not treat the participle and gerund forms as adjectives, they do not explain the distinction between them, when functioning as adjectives.
The use of attributive nouns is another cause for puzzlement. Attributive nouns relate to two or more nouns, juxtaposed, with no connecting words. Is “a science fair” a fair of things scientific, or a science of organizing fairs? Neither the American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition, 2000, http://www.bartleby.com/61/, nor the Merriam-Webster OnLine Dictionary provide an answer.
Even for a specific function, dictionaries often provide a plurality of meanings. For example, the word “order” as a transitive verb, has six meanings, according to the American Heritage® Dictionary. Yet, in a particular context, many of these meanings are irrelevant, and their inclusion makes the use of the dictionary cumbersome, even frustrating.
An instrument, which has the power of a dictionary, but which is specifically adapted for language acquisition, is desired.